Page 20 of The Family Remains

14

June 2019

Stella skips to keep up with Lucy as they walk back to Henry’s apartment. ‘Why are we walking so fast?’

Lucy holds her key card to the panel outside the block and ushers Stella through the heavy chrome doors into the foyer. ‘I just need to make some calls, that’s all.’

‘Calls to who?’

‘To Clemency.’

Clemency is Phin’s younger sister and Lucy’s best friend.

‘Why is it so important? What’s happening?’

‘Nothing’s happening, baby. It’s fine.’

They exit the lift and enter Henry’s apartment, then Lucy gives Stella the bowl she’d made the butter icing in to lick and takes her phone into her bedroom.

‘Clem. It’s me. Listen. Something weird’s going on. Phin’s left the reserve and nobody knows where he’s gone.’

There’s a small, brittle silence and Lucy feels a jolt of understanding pass through her.

‘Oh my God. Clem! Was it you? Did you call him?’

‘Of course I called him! He is my brother, after all.’

‘But the trip was meant to be a surprise. We agreed that we weren’t going to say anything to him.’

‘No. You agreed. But I know Phin and he would have hated a surprise. Hated it with a passion. And the thought of Henry being there too …’

‘You told him Henry was coming?’

‘Of course. He had the right to know. I just – I’m sorry, Lucy, but I thought the whole thing was a terrible idea. I know Phin, and I can guarantee that he doesn’t want to be found by anyone, let alone Henry.’

‘Henry? Why do you say that?’ Lucy asks tentatively.

‘Oh, come on. You know why. The way Henry was with Phin, back then. The way he was obsessed with him. Then what happened. At the end.’

They fall silent, then. Their shared history is so big that it’s sometimes as if mere words cannot contain it and that it exists only in the pauses and the silences and the unfinished sentences. Twenty-six years is long enough for memories to grow cobwebby, abstract. Twenty-six years is long enough to doubt your recollection of things, to wonder if maybe things really did happen the way you think they happened. And in the house of horrors that Lucy, Henry, Clemency and Phin were brought up in, the truth was constantly warped and distorted through the filters of theirparents, the people who were supposed to care for them and protect them and the people who instead allowed them to suffer abuse and depravity.

Was Phin in danger from Henry back then, Lucy wonders, and is he in danger now?

Lucy sighs. ‘So, do you know where Phin went?’

‘I have no idea. I didn’t even speak to him. He was out on the range when I called so I just left a message for him.’

‘Saying?’

‘The Lambs have tracked you down. They’re coming to see you.’

‘And you don’t have any inkling where he might have gone?’

‘None. No. I’ve given him my number, given him Mum’s number. Haven’t heard a word from him yet. And who knows if I ever will. He was always a loner, my brother. Never a pack animal. Maybe that’ll be it for another twenty-six years …’ She sighs, loudly. ‘Fuck,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think he’d do a runner. I just wanted to warn him, that’s all. I just wanted him to be prepared. Not to disappear. Is Henry really fucked off?’

Lucy clears her throat, then says, ‘Henry’s gone.’

She hears Clem’s sharp intake of breath. ‘To where? To Africa?’